Ed Gorman's Blog, page 240

Robert Edmond Alter

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Every once in awhile I find an old pulp story that has some real resonance because of its heritage.

Robert Edmond Alter died way too young at age forty of cancer. I saw a letter of his quoted in a piece following his death. He said that he'd spent twenty years writing about men of strength and determination and now he would have to be one of those men himself.

By the standards of Fifties and Sixties pulp he had a successful career. If he was not quite of the first rank his skills, when he was a...

Jason Pinter: Why Men Don't Read

Ed here: Former editor and now bestselling suspense writer Jason Pinter writes an interesting piece called Why Men Don't Read.
He maintains that the big reason is that publishing doesn't market to men. This appears on Huffington Post today. I don't know if I agree with everything he says but it's a fascinating piece and well worth reading completely. Plus I'm a fan of his novels.


Jason Pinter:

Men read. Tons of them do. But they are not marketed to, not targeted, and often totally dismissed. Go...

Millard Kaufman; Christopher Rice

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Ed here: MIllard Kaufman was a decorated war hero and successful screenwriter. It was Kaufman who took MacKinley Kantor's 300 page script (!) for Gun Crazy and turned it into a usable and classic B movie script. Then in his late eighties he decided to start writing novels...

TUESDAY, APR 21, 2010 13:01 EDT From Salon/McSweeney's
Millard Kaufman: The 90-year-old boy novelist
McSweeney's remembers the boisterous fiction writer, World War II soldier and co-creator of "Mr. Magoo" VIDEO
BY JORDAN BASS...

FRANCESCO FRANCAVILLA; Somewhere in The Night

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from the blog of FRANCESCO FRANCAVILLA Comicbook Artist Storyboard Artist Illustrator

He's illustrating Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammett and it's knockout illustration. As is all his work.

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With so many would wounded and troubled vets returning home from WWll amnesia became a popular theme in fiction and movies alike.

Author vs. author

You bet authors hate/envy each other. The Chicago Examiner published a list of the 50 Greatest athor vs. author put-downs. Enjoy!

Mark Twain hates Jane Austen:
One man's Shakespeare is another man's trash fiction.
Consider this pithy commentary on the Great Bard's work:
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare....
But, of course, there must be SOME writers we ...

My friend Rich Chizmar's interesting life

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Small Maryland publisher nabs Stephen King deal
Cemetery Dance owner, like author, has a passion for his work

Cemetery Dance Publications has been chosen to be the exclusive publisher of Stephen King's latest niche book, "Blockade Billy." Shown in his office is Richard Chizmar, founder and owner of the company. (Gene Sweeney Jr., Baltimore Sun / April 12, 2010)

Stephen King is what got Richard Chizmar, owner of Cemetery Dance Publications, into the business of publishing horror and suspense boo...

Forgotten Books: Danse Macabre

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There are certain books you open up with a feeling of coming home. I'm not sure how many times I've read Stephen King's Danse Macabre but it's probably five or six times all the way through. And numerous times when I've opened it to read a specific arc or chapter. I started reading it when I was going through my latest series of radiation sessions and, as always, it made me happy. It's just one of those books.

Ostensibly the book deals with the traditions and tropes of horror fiction, movies, ...

Stereotypes the public seems to cherish

Sarah Weinman provided a link today to a piece by Christopher Rice (in The Daily Beast) who notes that many male writers don't do very well by their female characters. He cites four particularly fallow stereotypes:

THE COP'S WIFE WHO JUST DOESN'T GET IT.
THE BABE ASSASSIN.
THE ICE QUEEN BUREAUCRAT.
THE TOKEN LESBIAN COP.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-an...

Except for Michael Connolly and Michael Black and a few others I don't read ...

Act of Violence

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I watched this again last night and thought I'd reprint this to reming you to watch it, too.
Wednesday, July 20, 2006


Mary Astor in ACT OF VIOLENCE.


I usually eat lunch around twelve thirty, catch the news and then go back upstairs to my office to write again.

Yesterday I happened to be channel surfing when I saw the billboard for a Turner Classic movie called ACT OF VIOLENCE. I'd never seen it but as soon as I realized Robert Ryan (my favorite noir actor) was in it l knew I'd watch...

...worth a thousand words

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With so many sites devoting themselves to pulp art these days, I thought I'd nominate my choice for hardboiled perfection. This is a R.A. Maguire painting for a very good Harry Whittington novel. It seems to me that it includes just about every trope the form offers--the babe, the gun, the threat (in this case a sinister car), the night and upping the ante, some treacherous territory.

What cover do you think is particularly telling about hardboiled?